by Henry Treece
But in those days, it was not so. The only other man I loved was my baby brother Orestes. He was like a little doll to me, I loved washing him and nuzzling his body, which always smelled so warm and sweet. Many times, when the fit was on me, I would put him to my chest and implore Zeus to let milk come out of me. And when it didn’t, I wept to hand him back to Geilissa, to be wet-nursed.
Once she said to me, with her crooked smile, ‘If you want milk for the prince, then one day there’s an easier way of getting it than praying to the Man God, Electra.’
I asked her how, and she told me something that sounded silly and impossible. It concerned her young brother, a cowman in the sheds behind the great hall. She said he was a great hand at it, and her winking and gestures were so confusing that I didn’t know whether to run out to him straightaway, or to call the soldier at the door and tell him to beat her.
I ended by putting my hands over my ears, as though I was not listening, but I left a little space between my fingers so that I could hear.
I remember, she laughed and said, ‘Oh,’tis a small thing, lady. Especially for a fine boy like the prince. Someone is doing it all the time - why, even your own mother—and once they are used to it, it gets better and better. You will find out.’
My mother the queen came in while this was being said. She was tall, with bronze hair and a deathly white face. She always painted her mouth very red. I liked her in one way, but feared her in another. This day she smiled at us in her stiff, mask-like way, and said through her sharp teeth, ‘If I catch her at it, I will see that she loses all taste for it afterwards. And I’ll see that your brother does, too.’
When she went out, Geilissa made a very rude sign behind her back. I did not want the nurse to see that I agreed with her, because we of the kingly folk were not supposed to speak of one another to the slaves, or even to the better class of Cretan, So I went away,too, and ran up to my room above the armoury, where my little loom stood. There I worked at making shawls and ribbons for Orestes, thinking that if I could not suckle him, at least I could help to clothe him.
2
There was a loud shouting outside in the lower court before the palace. It was a bright clear morning, with a touch of frost in the air, and the roofs of the barons’ houses silvered, the colour a snail leaves behind him in the grass.
I was with my father. This was about a year before he left us. He was sitting on a carved oak stool and I was standing between his knees, tracing the dragons on his breastplate with one hand, and holding my corn doll with the other.
It is strange how clearly I see this—yet I forget what I broke my fast on only yesterday. Clearly, I recall the harsh dry scent of his hair and beard, the chill touch of his bronze armour, the deep tone of his voice that seemed to come from the cavern of his great chest, as water comes from the dark holes in rocks.
It was one of the last few times I was quite alone with my father, so that is why I remember it, perhaps.
I said, ‘King, why are you looking so grim? Why do you wear your breastplate every day now?’
He smiled and stroked my hair. ‘There are things a little girl would not understand, Electra.’
‘Try me and see, father. I can understand embroidery and where calves come from.’
‘Those things are easy, daughter. Zeus looks after the one, and a little fish-bone needle the other. But my grim looks and armour are not things themselves, they are the signs of other things, of something that lies back, and back, and back. There, I told you that you would not understand.’
He smoothed my dress and told me that I was getting to be a big girl. I pulled away from him and, dropping my corn doll, took hold of his hair on either side and tugged at it.
‘You are a bad father! Other fathers tell their daughters about things. Urana’s father tells her how chickens get in eggs, and where the sun goes at night. But you don’t tell me anything. And I am a year older than Urana.’
He bent and scratched his leg, where the bronze guard had chafed it. Then he looked up and said, ‘Urana’s father is only a second-class baron. He can walk round his boundaries in one short morning. A man like that, with only two wives, and about eight cows, has time to bother his head with eggs and where the sun goes. But kings…. Ah, kings are different.’
I was always being told this. It was often said with a sort of darkness, as though it was all a secret that children should not hear about. I said, ‘Please do not say this again, father. I have seen you In the bath, and I did not notice that you were much different from the boys I swim with in the stream. And if you mean that kings sometimes have to go under the axe, then that is not very different from being a soldier and having a sword hit you—or being a farmer’s slave and having a bull gore you.’
Agamemnon held me by the shoulders and said, ‘I know, death comes to all of us. But who told you about kings going under the axe, my sweet?’
His hands were so big that they seemed to fold round me entirely. My father the king was the biggest man in Hellas, I thought at that time. He was of the blood of giants, of Titans. I used to think that he could take any man in Hellas and break him apart with one twist. When he held my shoulders so, I wondered whether he meant to do that to me.
Frightened, I said, ‘Old Aphaea, the nurse. She tells me the ancient tales when she puts me to bed, father.’
‘You are no god! I know now that you are like anyone else, father.’
I said it bitterly, yet even in that bitterness I loved him more than ever.
The king said, I do not know. I think I feel different from other men, but there is a little part of me that is like other men, perhaps. The part that is not yet god.’
‘You cannot tell me that, now, father. I saw you crying. Why, the tears are still on your cheek.’
I began to wipe them away as he carried me about the room. He said, ‘It is when I think of you growing up and taking a man, Electra. That is when I am not a god. Consider; a king, even a great king such as I am, has few pleasures. He must always be at his trade of king, always giving judgement, giving battle, giving men a rule to live by. A king’s whole life is giving. So, there are times when he feels as though he wishes to receive, instead of giving. Yet what can he receive from others that his own power could not get for him? It is like giving once again, but to himself this time. Always giving.’
Now I was ruffling his hair and rubbing his stubbly beard the wrong way. I was hardly listening.
He said, ‘A king has only the love of his children to receive. That is his only reward for being a king. Only his close dear ones can give him that. So, when you speak of another man, a husband, I weep. Now do you understand?’
I pretended that I did, and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes! So tell me why you must sail away with the chiefs and barons and headmen, to leave me. If you love me so much, why leave me? I am ready to play with you in the orchard and on the hills every day, yet you plan to go away. Is that your love?’
He set me down on a table and clasped me round the waist. ‘All men, even kings, must often do what they have no taste for. A king is the chosen of his people, and he must do what is best for them. Hellas needs gold, and I must lead the men to get it. Far over the sea, my love, beyond the islands, where the great creatures spout in the waters, there lies a city of gold. The Phrygians who live there sit in gold chairs and cat off gold plates. To them, gold is as bronze to us, no more. Even their children play with gold dolls, and their dogs wear gold collars.’
Then the king walked away from, me, beating one hand into the other and saying, ‘That gold I must have. I shall destroy the city of the Phrygians, and shall drive them like beasts into the wilderness. Then our ships can sail up along the route old Jason discovered, to get gold from all the distant streams, and no one to stop us.’
I was about to answer him when the curtains opened and my Aunt Helen came in. She was my mother’s young sister, but was very different from Clytemnestra, whose face was thin and her hair reddish. Aunt Helen’s face
was oval and plump, and her hair was so yellow that it looked like spun gold. She wore it down her hack, proudly, like an unmarried girl. She had been married to my father’s brother, Uncle Menelaus, for ten years, yet she always tried to look like a maiden. Her bodice was so small that her breasts showed, like apples. She used to paint them, to make them even prettier, as unmarried girls did in those days. Her dresses were always very rich and splendid, with gold wire fringes on the skirts, in the Assyrian mode; and lions embroidered all over her cloak. But one never noticed what she was wearing, really. Aunt Helen’s body always seemed to be speaking, even through the richest robes.
And there was always a strange scent about her. It was like musk, or some sharp herb. Perhaps like the faint smell of pine woods, or of aromatic leaves burning in the distance. It was so much a part of her that I would have known if my Aunt Helen was in the room, even with my eyes shut.
She came to me as I sat on the table, with my legs dangling, and kissed me, letting her thick hair fall all about me until it seemed as though I was in a tent of gold. I touched her breasts, and even nibbled one of them, in game. She pretended to smack me and said, ‘You are as bad as your father, Electra!’
The king frowned and lifted me off the table. ‘Go into the cowshed,’ he said, ‘and see that those lazy slaves have milked all the cows.’ Aunt Helen saw my look, and said, ‘Then after a while come back and I will have a present for you. But do not hurry, for I have not got the present ready yet.’
I saw her glance at Agamemnon in a secret way I did not like. So I pretended to go to the barn, but turned round and came back, quietly along the passage, and hid myself among the curtains, where I could peep into the room.
3
All my life I have remembered what I saw and heard in that room, and the guilt of my listening has often run across my body at night like little mice scuttering, or small birds pecking inside me.
Agamemnon loomed like a dark bronze statue in the corner by the window, while Helen stood before him, simple as a farm girl now, clasping her narrow hands. Her voice, low and rough as a boy’s, said, ‘What of my family, brother? There are Menelaus and Hermione to think of.’
The king rubbed at his beard. ‘Not again, for god’s sake. We have been over it all before, woman. In this life there are tasks for us all. Does the young bull-leaper grovel on his knees whenever he smells the dung in the straw? Does the priestess draw back from catching blood in the libation cup?’
Helen lowered her gold head. ‘These you mention are trained for their work. I, wife and mother…’
Agamemnon began to laugh and to thump his hard brown fist against his armour.
‘Zeus! Zeus! Zeus!’ he kept saying. Then, ‘You get too nice, sister. I could name a dozen young fellows who have assisted at your training.’
But Helen would not let him say more. She swore with words that I had only heard among the slaves before, then ran at him and beat her narrow hands on his bronze breastplate, like a frantic woman chased by wolves, trying to get past a village gate.
Agamemnon was laughing down at her. He was so tall, she could not reach up to his face with her fists. Then he suddenly put his arms around her and drew her onto his armour. She was crying now that it hurt her, that he was bruising her, that she would have to explain the marks to Menelaus when she reached home again. But the king only growled at her, and bent over her, rubbing his harsh face against her smooth one. He was like a great bear, nuzzling its cub. Aunt Helen had stopped squealing out and was sighing and shuddering and trying to pull off her robe.
For a moment I almost thought of running into the room, to help her wrestle with my father, thinking that this was a game they played. But something stopped me, something that seemed to whisper at the back of my head, ‘Don’t go! Don’t meddle! This is not for you!’ I know now, what it was, but I was only a little girl then. So, I waited and watched, as far as I could, the curtains being in the way of some things. I saw the king wrap his heavy cloak round them both, and I heard Helen crying and laughing. I was very puzzled. I think I went to sleep for a while, in the hot afternoon, with the flies whirring round me in the dim passage-way.
Then all at once the curtains by me swung open waking me, and my father swept out, striding with long steps, his bronze sword-scabbard hitting against the stone walls, his cloak flaring out and taking all light from the place. I was glad that a fold of the curtain fell over me and he did not see that I had been spying on him.
For a while I sat there, then I heard Aunt Helen crying, and I went into the room. She was surprised to see me, but she sat up from the floor and arranged her robe. Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her slender hand and began to smile. I smiled also, because her hand had lain on the dusty floor and now her tears and the dust had left a smear across her painted face, giving her a comical look.
She drew me onto her lap and said, ‘Where have you come from, Electra? Have you been listening outside, then?’
I nodded my head. There was nothing I could think to say. Her gilded breast showed over her torn bodice and I touched it, as she often let me do. But this time she drew away from my hand with a little grimace. Then she smiled and patted my head.
‘There were things happening that you could not understand?’
I said, ‘The king was hurting you, wasn’t he?’
Helen shrugged her shoulders. ‘They almost always do. Kings, princes, barons, slaves…. They are all men. And men become furious and thoughtless. They can’t help it, Electra. Zeus made them like that. And perhaps it is just as well. If it were only like slipping into a warm bath, then we wouldn’t know it had happened, would we?’
I nodded, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. I got up and sat on father’s stool. Aunt Helen still sat on the floor, like a cat stretching when it wakes.
I said, ‘My father’s armour has scratched you, aunt. It is bleeding a little. Shall I get a cloth?’
She wiped her fingers over the scratch, then ran them down the skirt of her robe and smiled. ‘It is not the first time, and it will not be the last.’
In a while, she rose and came over to me, standing before me so that I smelled her musky scent. She reminded me of a mother cat, all furry and soft and warm.
She said, ‘Do you ever dream of Zeus, my love?’
I nodded that I did. She said, ‘What shape does he take in your dream? A bull? A fish? A goat?’
I said, ‘No. He is always like my father, the king. Always big, with a beard and red eyes, and that armour he wears. With the smell of horses on him. Like that.’
Aunt Helen sat down beside me and said, ‘Yes, that is how it is with me. I will tell you a secret—I think that Agamemnon is a god. No, not the highest god, perhaps—but a god, all the same.’
I took hold of her hand and held it to my cheek, as though it were a bird that had fallen from its nest and needed warming.
‘We both love him, do we not, Electra?’
‘I would do anything for him, aunt. I would lie down and let a bullock-cart roll over me. I would jump into the sea from the highest cliff. I would let him hack my head off, anything.’
Helen nodded, and hugged me to her.’ So would I. If Agamemnon wanted to eat me in a pie, then I would let the cooks chop me up into steaks. If he wanted to eat me raw, I would hold out my arm and say, “Here it is, lord. Devour me! ”’
We both began to laugh then, our arms round one another, as though we were one flesh. Many folk said that we looked as alike as two twin sisters. That made me glad, because Helen was very sweet and pretty.
At last she said,’ Men talk of freedom, but that is only a word. There is no freedom; there is only serving the god. And if the god is the king, then freedom is serving the king. Serving Agamemnon/
I agreed with her. She said,’ Just as the king must sometimes die for his people, as their Shepherd, so we must die for him if he wishes it.’
Her voice was so hushed and hoarse that I looked at her, fearing she would weep again.
But she shook the tears away from her eyes and smiled.
‘I shall tell you another secret, Electra. And you mustn’t tell your cousin Hermione about it, or she will cry and have nightmares. Do you promise?’
I nodded my head, and she whispered,’ Soon I am to be sacrificed. What do you think of that?’
I almost pulled away from her with shock, but she held me close, laughing.’ Silly goose! Silly goose! I don’t mean like that— dead flesh, white, with no blood, just smelling cold.’
I hugged her warm body again and laughed in relief. ‘I am so glad, aunt. Our cat caught a shrew yesterday and bit its body open. I saw what was inside. It was horrible. I would not like you to be like that.’
She said,’ There’d be much more of me, and different, I can tell you! But no, it’s not that.’
I said, ‘What then?’
She made me wait a long time. She was thinking how to say it, perhaps.
‘You know we have no gold in Hellas?’
‘Yes, the king told me about that. The Horse-tamers have it all now.’
Helen said, ‘Someone has to get it from them.’
I began to laugh, seeing my aunt wearing hard armour over her soft body and facing bearded Phrygians with a heavy sword in her little hand. She knew what I was thinking and she said, ‘There are other ways to fight than with a sword, Electra.’ But she was laughing, too. Helen always laughed a lot. Some of the men called her the merry queen. They never called my mother, Clytemnestra, that.
‘In a way, though, I am the sword of Hellas. The instrument, the tool. If I go to Troy, then the Hellenes will fight to get me back. They will kill the men of Troy, and then there will be gold in Mycenae once more.’
I scratched my head. ‘It seems wasteful. Could not the men of Hellas just go in their ships to Troy, without sending you there first? Why put you to the trouble, Aunt Helen?’
She made her eyes small and looked up at the rafters where the doves perched.
